23 BLACK LEADERS AND KOCH ATTACK 'PERVASIVE' RACISM

By RONALD SMOTHERS

Published: January 1, 1987

Mayor Koch and 23 black leaders agreed at City Hall yesterday to work together to attack what they called ''pervasive and systemic'' racism in the city.

Several participants called the meeting helpful, with Councilwoman Mary Pinkett of Brooklyn saying that it could help ''defuse'' things in the short run.

Arthur Barnes, the president of the New York Urban Coalition, said that the meeting dealt with ''complex'' issues of race relations and that the participants felt that they had ''by persuasion and the weight of our logic'' convinced the Mayor that improvements were needed. Growing Tension

Their remarks came in response to growing tension in New York City over a racial attack in Howard Beach, Queens, on Dec. 20. One of the victims, Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old black man, was struck by a car and died.

On Monday, murder charges against three whites accused in the attack were dropped for insufficient evidence after another black victim of the attack refused to testify.

The black leaders said yesterday that it was not their intent to take sides in the emerging debate over the investigation or the role that witnesses and lawyers have taken.

Earlier yesterday, in an emotional meeting with reporters at a Brooklyn church, lawyers for the two surviving black victims criticized not only some of the blacks who were to meet with Mr. Koch but also the police and prosecutors who have been investigating the case. One of those at the church meeting, the Rev. Al Sharpton, derisively called the City Hall meeting ''a coon show.'' 'A New Lynch Mob'

''What we have in this situation is this,'' said one of the lawyers, Alton H. Maddox Jr. ''The Mayor, the Police Department, the Queens District Attorney's Office, the Police Commissioner and some of our Negro leadership have all formed a new lynch mob. And they are hounding and chasing the messengers for speaking the truth. We have a lynch mob that is running loose in New York City.''

Mr. Maddox and another lawyer for the black victims, C. Vernon Mason, also said that their clients had stopped cooperating with the Queens District Attorney's office because prosecutors ''were making a case'' for the white defendants.

Point by point, Mr. Maddox and Mr. Mason sought to show how the police and prosecutors had mishandled the case and had unfairly subjected them to criticism that they had hampered the investigation.

At one point, Mr. Maddox's voice quavered and his eyes began tearing as he said he was hurt and insulted by Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward's suggestion on Tuesday that the lawyer was involved in the case for the money he could make from any civil suit growing out of the incident.

''How could Ward be used by that man that way,'' Mr. Maddox said, referring to Mayor Koch. ''I have not received a dime from the Griffith family or any soul breathing air on this earth. I have not been promised a dime from the Griffith family or from any soul breathing air on this earth. I have no expectations of receiving a dime from the Griffith family or any soul breathing air on this earth.'' 'An Even Greater Degree'

At a news conference after the hour-and-a-half meeting in City Hall, the Mayor said that he had asked for and heard the participants' recommendations for eliminating racial discrimination in the city. The Mayor conceded that it may be more difficult to eliminate the racism ''in the hearts of people.'' But he vowed that his administration would work to see that the law was vigorously applied in cases of racial bias and racial violence.

''Those who violate the law should be brought to justice very quickly and, when tried and convicted, be sentenced to an even greater degree than they would if the case did not include that bias aspect.''

The Mayor's comments came in the wake of a meeting that at first appeared to what some of the black leaders had thought to be an attempt to reinforce his call Tuesday to the lawyers for one of the victims, Cedric Sandiford, to end their refusal to allow their client to be interviewed by the prosecutors.

Although spokesmen for the Mayor insisted that was not its purpose, the suggestion was much on the minds of those who attended. Comment From Rangel

Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat, said that he was pleased that the Mayor had not tried to convince those in attendance that they should, as a group,''second-guess the judge, prosecutor witness or attorneys'' in the case.

The Rev. Floyd H. Flake, who will soon take his seat as the new Congressman from the Queens district in which the Dec. 20 attack took place, added: ''It is appropriate that the Mayor has not tried to beat us in line on this issue, or to tell us what he wants us to do or say to the people. But to ask our concerns about what we do to eliminate racism.''

When asked whether the Mayor's concern was uncharacteristic, Mr. Rangel, in the past a frequent critic of the Mayor on a host of issues, including what he has termed Mr. Koch's lack of sensitivity to black concerns, was conciliatory and praised the leadership that the Mayor had shown so far in condemning the Howard Beach attack. But he added: